Who's responsible for the 'hell' in Yugoslavia?

Scan page 1

A Serblan sniper takes alm The threat of Wester military intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina is escalating. On Aug. 6, President Bush called for a UN resolution to allow the use of force in delivering food and medicine to the population in the war-ravaged areas. In the same issue of The New York Times that reported Bush's appeal, an editorial called for even more ambitious military intervention.

The editorial ignored an important point made in an article in the same issue: "As In Sarajevo: What are the roots of the crisis?

matters stand, any foreign aircraft or troops used to force relief supplies through would probably have to fire on Bosnian defenders as well as the Serbian forces besieging the city."

In fact, any Western military intervention will aim at disarming or crippling the forces fighting against the Great Serbian aggression in order to impose conditions favorable to the interests of the Western powers.

Already, Western pressure, according to (continued on page 10, in “An interview with a leader of the Brazilian rubber workers”) big urban centers. An estimated 90 percent of the workforce participated in the Johannesburg region, 60 percent in the Western Cape, and (according to preliminary reports by the South African Labour Bulletin) 75 percent in Durban. But in the mining regions, the strike was less effective.

The day after the strike, on Aug. 5, thousands of Blacks marched on "the centers of white power" in cities all over the country. The largest demonstration was in the capital, Pretoria. Our correspondents report that close to 70,000 marched on the Union Buildings. Over 40,000 marched in Capetown on the same day.

"The campaign for peace and democracy must become a tidal wave," Nelson Mandela told the throng assembled in front of the Union Buildings, "An interim government of national unity is an urgent and critical step."

Lost momentum

An interim government by the end of the year is the major demand of the campaign. Other demands include elections for a constituent assembly and measures to end political violence.

In calling for mass action, the ANC and its allies were forced to respond to the widespread feeling in the Black townships that CODESA (the ANC's negotiations with the government) did nothing to alleviate the poverty and deprivation caused by apartheid. Unemployment is currently approaching 50 percent and prices on basic food items are skyrocketing.

This sense of urgency was reflected on the placards that many carried in the

Scan page 2

What Socialist Action is all about Socialist Action came toward the end of its ninth year with a national convention that started on July 29 and ended on Aug. 2. Our members are revolutionaries, many of whom have been engaged in all of the struggles of the American working people from the 1930s through today.

Socialist Action members were part of the struggles against racism and sexism, for the right to organize unions and to strike, and in opposition to imperialist wars.

At the present time, we are engaged in defending our health clinics against Operation Rescue. Some of the same people who beat the scabs down on the picket lines of the 1930s, are today up at dawn to defend our abortion clinics from the big-mouth minority who want women, especially teenagers, to retur to "coathanger" and back-alley abortions.

Along with our home-grown By fighters, we had guests at the convention from Black South Africa, Europe, and Latin America. All of us have the same enemy-the capitalist class.

As revolutionary working-class socialists, we are enthusiastic about the future. We know that there are really two worlds, the world of the exploiters and the world of the exploited. As in our own land, every country has two traditions-that of the oppressor and of the oppressed.

Our America was born from the Revolution of 1776. Workers, farmers, and enslaved people, Black and white, took on the King of England and all his horses and men, and kicked their butts all the way back across the Atlantic Ocean.

Again, in 1861-65, our America fought and died to rid this country of the scourge of slavery. It was the poor, the oppressed and the exploited-along with the slaves themselves—who did the fighting and dying. (The rich could literally buy exemption from the draft.)

Since that time, however, our world has witnessed one horrible war after another. Each time, the sons of working people are sent to kill the sons of workers of other lands. All the killing is done only to line the pockets of capitalists. And the technology of killing is made ever more efficient and extended to include women and children and other non-combatants.

Every day, moreover, tens of thousands of men, women, and children starve to death. Every day, increasing poverty means that millions are condemned by capitalism to malnutrition, outright starvation, and disease.

Despite fantastic advancements in science and technology, misery grows every day. It has reached the point where millions of people wonder whether the human race, and life itself, will survive on this planet.

Imperialism, with American capitalism at its head, is in each country based on a small minority of capitalists, landlords, and militarists who, thinking they own the Earth and everything on it, will stop at nothing-including nuclear annihilation, if necessary—to keep it for themselves. estimated as far back as 1964 that 80 percent of cancers are caused by human-produced carcinogens. Today that estimate has risen to 90 percent of all cancers.

But Socialist Action is confident that our world, the world of the exploited and oppressed masses, will ultimately prevail over the world of the capitalists. Our world includes everyone struggling for freedom; from Black Africa to Black America, from neo-colonialized Asia to Latin America.

Our world includes women everywhere who struggle for social and economic justice. It includes all who must battle for their daily bread. It includes everyone who marches against imperialist war; everyone who fights against the destruction of the balance of life on Earth.

Our world includes all true artists (i.e., artists who tell the truth). It includes the rap singers, the poets and painters. Those whose words and images give hope and enlightenment for the poor, and nightmares to the rich.

Our world does not include those who advocate political support for the enemy class. It does not include those who say, "Vote for the lesser evil even if it means holding your nose." It doesn't include those who preach that "workers and bosses are partners." It doesn't include those who preach servility and capitulation to the social vampires and parasites of the world of capitalism.

Our world will come to understand that when the exploited and lution, the ACS tums the definition of "cancer prevention" into an admonishment to visit your doctor more frequently.

"The largest cancer organization oppressed unite in a common struggle, we can change everything. And in the words of one of my favorite pioneer revolutionary socialists!, we must:

"Throw out the profit and rent hogs, and increase the living standard of the people who do useful work.

"Assure freedom and democratic rights to all, not forgetting those who are denied any semblance of them now.

"Call back the truculent admirals from the seven seas-and ground the airplanes with their dangling bombs.

"Hold out the hand of friendship and comradely help to the oppressed and hungry people in the world."

But to accomplish this goal requires building a party that has absorbed the lessons of history. It is indispensable for bringing capitalist insanity to an end once and for all. That's what Socialist Action is all about.

1 James P. Cannon, 1890-1974, was a founder and leader of the Communist Party up until his expulsion for opposition to Stalinism in 1928. He went on to be a central leader of the American and world Trotskyist (i.e., revolutionary Marxist) movement and its organizational expression, the Fourth International.

The ACS's record on opposing cancer-causing drugs and chemicals is horrendous. It opposed warning labels on high-risk hormone-containing drugs like